---

Pastor’s weekly Blog

Psalm 14:1  To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. 14:2  The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. 14:3  They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.  (KJV)
The Holy Spirit inspired David to write about a rather bleak observation from Heaven’s point of view.  The predominant religion of the world is the “I’m a good person” religion.  We can always find someone doing things a little worse than us and that gives us comfort.   We’ve never done anything really really bad from our point of view.   We’re certainly not as bad as those hypocrites we condemn (when truthfully we are guilty of our own hypocrisy!).  Perhaps we were raised in a Christian home.   Maybe we’ve gone through all the rites and ceremonies that we deem appropriate to be made right with God.   We got perfect attendance pins for Sunday School, followed by public profession/baptism, followed by church membership.  None of those things are bad.   But they don’t have the power to make one right with God.  
One of the major objections we have to Paul’s line of reasoning in Romans (and David’s Psalm 14 here) stems from a misunderstanding of what it truly means to be “good”.    We think in terms of earthly good.  God has created us with a common grace that allows even fallen men (like us!) the ability to do some good.  Even hardened criminals often love their children or spouses and do kind things for them.  We all know of people that don’t worship God and yet they might give their employees a Christmas bonus or donate money to charity.   Jesus offered some perspective on this when He said:
Mat 7:11  If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? (KJV)
Jesus argues from the lesser to the greater (this is called an “A Fortiori” argument).   His point here is that the Heavenly Father is perfect and therefore we shouldn’t hesitate to approach him in prayer because we don’t hesitate to approach our sinful earthly parents.  Because of our fallen nature, our perspective on “goodness” is extremely skewed.   We measure and compare ourselves among ourselves and in so doing, we are not wise (2 Cor 10:12).  Jesus made it clear that there is truly no one “good” but God Himself (Matt 19:17).   When we compare our goodness to the goodness of God, we find that our righteousness is nothing but filthy rags (Isa 64:6).  If we evaluate David’s words from Psalm 14 we might conclude the following;   rather than asking why God allows anyone to go to hell, we ought to ask why would God save anybody?   Thankfully, God in His infinite mercy looks beyond our faults and sees our great need!   A need for righteousness- one that comes from God…..one that will truly justify!   I greatly look forward to talking more about that with you this Sunday. Until then, I bid you “Shalom!”
-Henry Haney Jr

Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.